Oil and the Lausanne Conference
Oil and the Lausanne Conference
Oil dominated press coverage of the Lausanne Conference, yet historians have paid it little attention. Those historians who have addressed oil diplomacy in these years have tended to adopt a top-down perspective, one that presents oil companies as the tools of foreign ministries. This chapter restores agency to the financiers and speculators who jostled at Lausanne, each claiming the right to determine how oil reserves lying within the borders of the former Ottoman Empire were exploited. Although the Turkish (later Iraq) Petroleum Company) emerged victorious, shaping the development of Middle East oil under the terms of the 1928 Red Line Agreement, this outcome was far from clear in 1922–1923. It is possible to imagine an alternative oil settlement merging from Lausanne, one that might have offered a more equitable division of the Middle East's oil wealth.
161-178
Conlin, Jonathan
3ab58a7d-d74b-48d9-99db-1ba2f3aada40
28 July 2025
Conlin, Jonathan
3ab58a7d-d74b-48d9-99db-1ba2f3aada40
Conlin, Jonathan
(2025)
Oil and the Lausanne Conference.
In,
Hatzivassiliou, Evanthis, Gavouneli, Maria and Tsakonas, Panayotis
(eds.)
The Treaty of Lausanne: Looking Back, Looking Ahead.
(New Perspectives on South-East Europe)
Cham.
Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., .
(doi:10.1007/978-3-031-91076-0_11).
Record type:
Book Section
Abstract
Oil dominated press coverage of the Lausanne Conference, yet historians have paid it little attention. Those historians who have addressed oil diplomacy in these years have tended to adopt a top-down perspective, one that presents oil companies as the tools of foreign ministries. This chapter restores agency to the financiers and speculators who jostled at Lausanne, each claiming the right to determine how oil reserves lying within the borders of the former Ottoman Empire were exploited. Although the Turkish (later Iraq) Petroleum Company) emerged victorious, shaping the development of Middle East oil under the terms of the 1928 Red Line Agreement, this outcome was far from clear in 1922–1923. It is possible to imagine an alternative oil settlement merging from Lausanne, one that might have offered a more equitable division of the Middle East's oil wealth.
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Published date: 28 July 2025
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 506551
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/506551
ISSN: 2662-5857
PURE UUID: 80cfe258-661a-40a4-9382-857a08045623
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Date deposited: 11 Nov 2025 17:41
Last modified: 12 Nov 2025 02:39
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Contributors
Editor:
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou
Editor:
Maria Gavouneli
Editor:
Panayotis Tsakonas
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